Gadgetory

the Moto Z 3-play is a mid-range phone through and through it is part of the Moto Z family which means that it's got magnetic connectors on the back that can accept mods of all sorts view those cases battery packs or anything else what makes the z3 place special is that it comes with a mod in the box this is an extra battery pack that will take the phone to two days of battery life on a single charge you can set the battery to keep your phone at a hundred percent or to keep your phone at 80 percent but you'll get a little bit longer life if you keep it at 80 percent I was able to do pretty much everything on the phone with the battery pack on one thing I will say about the mod though is that it's not very attractive the back of the phone is pretty sleek it's glass it looks really nice and but it looks a little haft finish when you don't have something on top of it when you put the model on it it snaps on easily like all the mods do and it starts working instantly but it feels a little bit bulky and the backing which was glass and pretty nice now has this like semi plastic semi rubbery feel and it doesn't pick up fingerprints I like that but it just doesn't really feel that nice it definitely looks and feels like a mid-range device unlike last year's moto z2 plate the z3 play loses the headphone jack which is a bummer it's got this USBC connector which is standard but if you want to use your own wired headphones you're going to have to buy a dongle one thing I do like about the design is the fingerprint reader on the right side of the phone at first I thought it was really awkward because I hold the phone lower so I was sort of lunging my thumb up to unlock it but even after a couple days it just became second nature let's talk about the cameras there's a dual camera setup on the back you've got a 12 megapixel lens and a 5 megapixel lens you can take portrait shots all the photos were pretty much middle of the road and all sorts of lighting conditions indoors outdoors portrait group shots low light you name it all of the photos are totally usable sharing them with friends directly uploading them to social media but these are not the kinds of pictures that you're going to want to use to print onto a mug for example there's an 8 megapixel front-facing for all of your selfies it does a pretty decent job there is a beauty mode and then there's also an automatic mode if you don't want to manually adjust I've always been a really big fan of Motorola's take on an Android this phone comes with android 8.0 and the motorola UI is one that i just find really easy and nice to work with one example is the one hand in button navigation at the bottom of the screen instead of seeing three buttons to navigate around go home go back to live reasons etc there's one slider button and you do everything with this so you compress it hold to pull up Google assistant you slide to the left to go back and you slide to the right to get your recent apps I think it's really seamless it's fluid it was easy for me to pick up and use right away it's kind of like a better version of what Google's showing with Android peace so I do like that it's totally opt-in so it's not there by default and if you try it and don't like it you can always switch back to the stock navigation I like the Moto z3 play but I don't love it and part of that comes down to price I do love the value-add of having this add-on battery pack that comes in the box but when you look at some of the competition for about the same price you're looking at the 1 + 6 even last year's LG G 6 and those phones are just they're faster they're better they do more so until the price comes down I say go with one of those when it drops this will definitely become a better value mid-range offering you